Eklavya
The defence ministry issued the ‘formal sanction letter’ for the raising of a Mountain Strike Corps last November to guard the Himalayas from Ladakh in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east. Hopefully the last hurdle has been crossed for creating an adequate fighting force to keep the increasingly assertive Chinese at bay along the Line of Actual Control where on several hundred occasions Indian “actual control” was missing because of a paucity of manpower and infrastructure. But the question still nags: Is it enough?
The Mountain Strike Corps of two independent infantry divisions and two independent armoured brigades – a total of about 80,000 men– has raised questions as wide-ranging as the one by the Finance Ministry which controversially asked whether the Chinese did pose a threat to Indian security to warrant such a rise; to estimates from retired military personnel that made out a case for as many as three new Mountain Strike Corps to be able to ensure a viable “actual control” all along the 4,056-km long border. In recent years the China has increased the frequency and depth of penetration especially in the Daulat Beg Oldi-Depsang valley area of J and K and laid claim to the entire Arunachal Pradesh not just Tawang valley as it did previously.
It needs to be underscored that wherever there is an eyeball-to-eyeball deployment as in Nathu La, there have been no attempts to acquire additional territory by frontal attack, after the one bloody encounter that battered the Chinese in 1967. The Chinese have been nibbling (‘salami slicing’) at our territory all along the northern sector wherever we have not had enough troops patrolling our claim line as in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. It needs to be recalled that the Pakistanis too took advantage of the absence of Indian troops who had shifted out for the winter in the Dras-Kargil sector in 1999. Clearly what India needs to demonstrate is ‘actual presence’ in all kinds of terrain and all kinds of weather conditions; otherwise both China and Pakistan will take full advantage of the situation.
The major raison d’etre for the raising of the new Mountain Strike Corps is the awareness that it is now no longer possible for India to shift forces from a theatre opposite China to a theatre opposite Pakistan and vice versa without leaving exploitable gaps in our defence on both fronts. More so since the growth of infrastructure of roads, bridges and forming up places has been lagging behind schedule because of the difficulties in cutting roads in such rugged mountain terrain.
By creating a vast infrastructural network in the Tibet Autonomous Region China is able to deploy as many as 30,000 troops within two days whereas it will take India more than four days to be able to deliver battalion strength of troops at any point along the LAC (as was illustrated during the Depsang crisis not long ago). India needs to correct this imbalance and swing the ratio around to its advantage by ensuring that even while China is able to deploy three times more troops at any point along the LAC and use “human wave” tactics it will not be able to make a breakthrough of the kind that it did in 1962.
For this India will need more troops facing China in Jammu and Kashmir and a similar number in what is known as the “Sugar Sector” bordering Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The new Strike Corps of about 80,000 men should help ensure that more than three lakh Chinese troops can be held at bay given the rule of thumb that it is appropriate for an attacking force to deploy three times more personnel against entrenched troops to be able to secure a breakthrough. This is even more appropriate in mountainous terrain given the length and alignment of the Line of Actual Control.
The new Mountain Strike Corps has two attached independent Armoured Brigades. Armour in the mountains, one could ask. But yes, India deployed tanks in Daulat Beg Oldi against the Chinese in 1962. The terrain is salt flatlands very liberally strewn with huge boulders. Tanks are able to operate there and create an offensive capability against the Chinese within the “Sugar sector”. However, more importantly, tanks can be deployed through the Geygong-Gaygong gap in north Sikkim and open up areas of penetration south of the Brahmaputra. This access through the Geygong-Gaygong gap also makes it possible for India to cut off Chinese troops inside the Chumbi valley if they attempt to disrupt the very narrow Siliguri corridor that connects the north-eastern region with rest of the country.
The new Corp, the 17th Corps as it will be called, will need a gestation period of about six years to acquire the “light” varieties of all types of weapons from assault rifles to 155 mm howitzers of the Bofors kind which demonstrated their capabilities very successfully during the Kargil war. India is buying the 155 mm ultra light howitzers through the “military sales” route from the US.
Indian troops are at the point of discarding the indigenously designed and developed Indian National Small Arms System (INSAS) genre of handguns; they have been buying Israeli small arms which are more adaptable to the unconventional warfare unleashed by terrorists. However, the experience of warfare in the mountains is different and it has been found that any weapon with a range less than 1000 meters could be a disadvantage when troops can be facing an enemy entrenched on the opposite slope. India has had to buy what is known as “anti-material rifles” that have long barrels and fire a bullet with a calibre of 7.62 mm or more The INSAS and the Israeli weapons are of 5.56 mm calibre. These weapons are bunker busters and can destroy soft skinned armour, artillery and mortar emplacement at ranges well beyond anything that current small arms issued to Indian troops in the mountains can. (Syndicate Features)
(The author is a seasoned strategic expert)
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